One Girl in All the World
by museless22
Summary: It was as she was shoving the blouse into the main compartment that her fingers brushed up against the familiar wooden surface, the sharpened point of a stake, and she scowled and pushed it as far down into the mess of clothing as she possibly could. She had only kept it as a precaution. She wasn't doing that anymore. Screw destiny. AU In which Emma is the Slayer.


They left for the airport immediately following the funeral. The press of bodies in Phoenix International was made all the more stifling by the black skirt that hugged Emma's thighs and the modest but unfamiliar heels on her feet. David, or Sheriff Swan as she still sometimes referred to him in her head (It had started as a child's game but "Dad" seemed at times too personal for a man she saw only for two weeks of every year), was dapper in his crisply pressed suit, a perfect military crease running down the front of each leg and shoes shined so that Emma was almost positive she would be able to make her reflection out clearly on their surface if she dared to look. If not for the uncomfortable way his fingers plucked at his tie at odd intervals, pulling the fabric and shifting the knot from side to side, one might never know he was a man far more at home in his armor of flannel and jeans.

Emma's things had already been sent along to his home-her home too, now, though it still felt strange to refer to it as such- and checking in was made more expedient with only his leather satchel and her backpack as carry-ons. As they filtered through the cattle chute affair of security they walked together but apart, David still not quite sure how to approach the teenage girl that had suddenly been thrust upon him and Emma caught up in pondering the solid weight that had settled into her chest over the course of the past week.

The initial numbness had begun to fade and what it left behind was a sharper, gaping chasm. Was this, she wondered, how it felt to try and breath around a bullet hole?

When they had made it past the metal detectors and finally resecured their shoes, Emma hefted her backpack and gestured at the little blue restroom sign a short way down the concourse.

"I'm going to change."

"Okay. You hungry? Want me to get you something?"

David's big blue eyes, so different from the green she shared-had shared- with her mother, were wide and earnest. He was so eager to offer comfort and she was so grateful that he wasn't one to offer awkward hugs or platitudes that she couldn't completely turn him down. "Coffee, I guess? Something chocolate. There's a Starbucks, I think."

She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten but the mere thought of food made her stomach turn in knots. A mocha, however, would be a welcome indulgence. Hot, sugar infused confections were her comfort food of choice.

"With whipped cream. And maybe see if they'll put some cinnamon on it?"

He wrinkled his nose-he was a man, she knew, who couldn't fathom why anyone would want to ruin a good cup of coffee with the likes of sugar and chocolate-but nodded. "Okay. Don't take too long. We board in half an hour."

It felt a little like being freed from a prison, exchanging the skirt and stiff button up blouse for her favorite worn jeans and white tank. The heels were shoved rather violently into her backpack's front pocket and she wriggled her toes gratefully before pulling on her running shoes. It was as she was shoving the blouse into the main compartment that her fingers brushed up against the familiar wooden surface, the sharpened point of a stake, and she scowled and pushed it as far down into the mess of clothing as she possibly could.

She had only kept it as a precaution. She wasn't doing _that_ anymore. Screw destiny. They couldn't make her. Not after everything that had happened.

Mugging gone wrong, the papers had said. No mention of the twin puncture wounds on her mother's neck or the way she had been drained of her blood or the fact that Emma could have, SHOULD have saved her. If she'd been better.

Emma paused at the sink to wash her face, having to wrestle with the automatic sensor to capture enough water in her cupped palms. It did very little to assuage the redness of her eyes or the dark circles beneath them. She huffed at her reflection, tied limp blond girls in an inelegant knot and gave the zipper of her favorite red hoodie one sharp tug so it rested just below her sternum. "As good as it's gonna get."

She found David sitting stiffly in one of the rows of squat blue chairs in front of their gate holding two steaming paper coffee cups. He handed one to her as she sat beside him and bared his teeth in a fleeting smile. "It's only a five hour flight to Portland, then-"

"Dad. I do this every summer. I know how it goes."

"Oh. Right."

They sat in silence a few moments, sipping their respective beverages. Then he said, a little hesitant, "I think you'll like living in Storybrooke. I grew up there. I-" He paused, swallowing thickly, "I met your mother there. It's a nice little town."

She knew, from her visits, that "nice little town" was all too apt a description. Nice and boring. Slow. Not at all like Phoenix, with its enormous city sprawl and a hundred different things to do on any given day.

"Yeah, I'm sure I will."

########

It was raining when the plane touched down in Maine. Thick, heavy rain that pelted the windows in sheets. Luckily David's big blue Silverado was parked in a covered garage and they managed to load up unscathed.

Emma drew her knees up to her chest and leaned against the passenger door as they pulled out of the airport parking lot, watching rivulets of rain chase each other down the tinted window. It turned the world outside into a distorted blur, all flashes of light and an endless blanket of grey.

David played with the radio dial, getting an abundance of static and commercials before giving up. The silence between them yawned uncomfortably and Emma pressed her cheek against the window, welcoming the soothing coolness of the glass as she listened to his fingers drum restlessly against the steering wheel.

FInally he said, "I didn't do anything special with your room. We can paint it, if you want. Now that you're going to be living in it full time you might as well make it your own."

Thinking of the godawful floral print wallpaper in what had always been more like a guestroom than her own, personal bedroom, Emma nodded. It would be nice to do something different. She would have to deal with those walls for the next two years, and that was assuming she left for college straight away after graduating. "Cool. That'll be fun."

She spent the rest of the drive drifting in and out of sleep, troubling dreams she couldn't hold onto long enough to remember properly dancing behind her eyelids.

It was the lack of the truck engine's comforting roar that finally jerked her to full alertness. The rain had died down to a moody drizzle and through the windshield she could just make out the familiar two story, with its manicured lawn and general overlay of suburban bliss. The hydrangea bushes beneath the front windows, drooping heavily with moisture, were a little bit more unkempt than she remembered but other than that nothing had changed.

"Home sweet home." David said beside her, locking the emergency break into place. He ruffled Emma's curls affectionately before pushing his door open and swinging a leg down to the slick pavement of the driveway. "Let's get you up into bed, sleepyhead."

It was with a certain amount of gratitude that she allowed her father to guide her up the front steps, one strong arm wrapped about her shoulders while he carried their bags in his other hand. They shuffled their way upstairs, passed smiling pictures mostly of a younger Emma, and to her bedroom where she put forth just enough effort to kick off her shoes before falling onto the bed, resplendent with its butterfly patterned blankets that she'd thought perfect when she'd been about four, and wrapping herself around pillows that were hers but not. She had used them so little over the years that they smelled more of unfamiliar fabric softener than herself.

David gently deposited her backpack on the floor at the foot of her bed and kissed her forehead before excusing himself with a quiet, "Goodnight." and leaving her alone in the dark.

She lay for a long time, staring at the door knob only just made visible by the light from the streetlamp filtering through her window. The blessed unconsciousness that came to her so easily earlier was somehow more elusive now, wrapped up in the comfort of her new but not new bed in a room still cluttered with the boxes that contained the entirety of her short life.

It was, she found, the small things she missed the most.

The gentle clinking of the beaded curtains that separated her "bedroom" from the rest of her and her mother's small studio apartment as they were caressed by the breeze from the air conditioner. The cloying, heavy cent of the rose based incense her mother liked to burn during her nightly meditation ("It's fruitless to try and sleep with a head full of thoughts." she'd always said. "Best to clean the slate first."). She even dearly longed for the simple sound of the woman's breathing, and the way she hummed to herself when she thought Emma was asleep.

The thought that these were things all gone forever were almost too much to bare.

'Out with the bad. In with the good.' She told herself, trying to breath in that rhythmic way that her mother had taught her around the sobs that choked in her throat. 'Focus on your heartbeat, narrow your awareness down to each individual thud. Nothing outside of this moment exists.'

It was terribly hard to maintain the mantra that nothing outside of this particular instant mattered with the memory of her loss stabbing into her breast with every breath, but the familiarity soothed her enough to ease the hiccuping heaves that shook her from her core as she fought to keep from sobbing aloud. Eventually the prickling sting of tears receded and she fell into an uneasy slumber riddled with dreams of rhythmic drum beats and fragmented wisps of lullabies. The images eventually solidified into more tangible things, fleeting glimpses of a cemetery and shadows of people whose faces she could never quite see.

Then she was suddenly underground, the heavy weight of the earth pressing in from all sides and the air thick with the cloyingly sweet scent of rot. It was a cave that someone had dressed up to look like a throne room and Emma could see the flickering of candle light all around her periphery and a blood red rug led up crudely carved steps to a dais on which was seated a creature so still she might have been a statue. Definitely a she, for the corset she wore, looking like something straight out of the eighteen hundreds, provided a view of ample cleavage but her face was hidden by a mask she held in front of it with delicately gloved fingers. It gleamed silver in the candlelight, inlaid with little rubies that looked like so many drops of blood.

_"Slayer..."_

Emma jerked awake with a start that nearly sent her tumbling over the edge of her mattress. Her clothes and sheets were soaked through with cold sweat and she kicked her blankets away in disgust.

"Emma?" David's voice called from the hallway, the man himself knocking sharply at her door before cracking it open and peeking around the frame. The girl pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids, groaning.

"Dad, I'm up!"

"Don't want to be late for your first day."

Emma returned David's hopefully brilliant smile with a grimace, flouncing back on her bed after he had disappeared.

"No, wouldn't want that..."


End file.
